Sabaʾ 34:7-8

Wa qāla'lladhīna kafarū hal nadullukum ʿalā rajulin yunabbiʾukum idhā muzziqtum kulla mumazzaqin innakum la-fī khalqin jadīd · Aftarā ʿala'llāhi kadhiban am bihī jinnatun, bali'lladhīna lā yuʾminūna bi'l-ākhirati fi'l-ʿadhābi wa'ḍ-ḍalāli'l-baʿīd

"Those who disbelieved said: 'Shall we point you to a man who tells you that when you have been torn utterly to pieces you will be in a new creation? Has he invented a lie against God, or is there madness in him?' No! Those who do not believe in the hereafter are in the punishment and in far-gone error."

The sentence opens with a question: hal nadullukum ʿalā rajul — "shall we point you to a man?"

This pattern is worth recording, because the pattern itself is a pattern of invitation. In Arabic dalāla (to point out, to indicate) is a verb of doing good; one says "shall I point you to so-and-so" and something valuable follows. Here the same pattern is used inverted.

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the pattern itself: the mockery is built not in the language of opposition but in the language of invitation. The speakers present what they reject as though introducing it — and expect the absurdity to emerge of itself from the content of the introduction.

And the word rajul must be recorded: "a man". No name is given, no attribute. At al-Najm 53/2 and al-Takwīr 81/22 the word ṣāḥibukum (your companion) was treated — what was recorded there was that the word rests on acquaintance. Here exactly the opposite is done: a familiar person is turned into an unknown "man".

And this contrast lies inside the sūra: those who say rajul in the seventh verse will be answered in the forty-sixth verse with ṣāḥibikum. This is an exchange that can be verified from the text.

In the root index this is the first place the root is analysed.

The concrete sense of the root: to tear, to rend, to shred. Mazaqa'th-thawb — he tore the cloth. The original picture in the word is a piece of cloth or leather being torn — not cut, but pulled apart.

The pattern is doubled, and this must be recorded: muzziqtum (Form II, passive — "you were torn to pieces") + kulla mumazzaq (the absolute object, mafʿūl muṭlaq — "with every kind of tearing"). That is, the verb is not said once and left; it is reinforced with its own verbal noun.

In Arabic this structure (verb + absolute object from the same root) conveys intensity and extent. In English it can only be carried by piling a reinforcing word on top: "when you have been torn utterly to pieces".

And now we come to one of the strongest textual data in the sūra — this needs a table of its own.

The expression is word for word the same in both places: kulla mumazzaq. And the difference lies in the subject of the verb: in the seventh verse it is passive (who did the tearing is not said), in the nineteenth first person (mazzaqnā — We tore them).

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the verbal overlap of the two verses: those who disbelieve choose a word to describe an event they hold to be remote and ridiculous. The sūra takes that same word and fastens it to an event that actually happened in history. The tearing apart that was made an object of mockery is named twelve verses later as something that came upon a people.

That is, the objection is answered with its own word. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text, and it is one of the most striking points of word order in the sūra.

The sentence offers two possibilities:

And together the two options carry out a closing of doors: the first is a moral charge, the second a medical one. Both leave outside the possibility that what he says might be true.

At Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) 40/28 the two-option argument built by the believing man was treated in detail. I rely on that treatment and compare the two structures, because the same form has been used for two opposite purposes:

The difference lies in a single place, and it is decisive: the second option in Ghāfir leaves the door open, the second option in Sabaʾ closes it.

I record this as my own reading, and its support is the second row of the table above: both sides reason in the form "either this or that". But one leaves a share of truth to one of the options, while the other builds both options as accusations. The issue, then, is not the form of the reasoning but whether the options have been counted honestly. A real dilemma takes both possibilities into account; a manufactured dilemma offers only two separate routes to rejection.

بَلِ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱلْءَاخِرَةِ فِى ٱلْعَذَابِ وَٱلضَّلَٰلِ ٱلْبَعِيدِ — and the answer rejects both options and builds a third sentence: "no!"

بَلْ — in Arabic the particle that cancels the preceding judgement and puts a new one in its place. That is, the verse does not choose one of the options; it treats the question as void.

ٱلضَّلَٰلِ ٱلْبَعِيدِ — "far-gone error". The root ب-ع-د is a backbone word in this sūra, and this is its first occurrence. It will return in the nineteenth verse inside a prayer (bāʿid bayna asfārinā), and in the fifty-second and fifty-third verses as a distance (min makānin baʿīd). I shall tabulate it at the end.